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DBT Skills · Part 4 of 4

Emotion Regulation Skills

Naming, Understanding, Shifting
Healing Light SA — Client Worksheet
How to regulate your emotions: the ACCEPTS skills
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Use Alone or in Session
Sometimes emotions show up with more intensity than the moment calls for. The ACCEPTS skills below are ways to turn the volume down on a difficult emotion — not to avoid it forever, just to get through the peak of it.

ACCEPTS

A — Activities

What's an activity you enjoy? What do you feel when you do it, and when could you set aside time for it this week?

C — Comparisons

In what ways are you better off today than you were in the past — more experienced, more matured? How does that shift your perspective?

C — Contribution

Who's someone (or what's a cause) you could help right now — with time, or in some small way? How does contributing get your mind off your own problem for a while?

E — Emotion Opposites

What emotion has been getting to you — sad, bored, angry, frustrated? What's the opposite of that (joy, calm, gratitude), and what's one way to build more of it?

P — Push Away

Sometimes you can't solve a problem right this second. What's one you're carrying right now that you could set down until you're actually able to work on it?

T — Thinking Activities

Puzzles, planning, strategy games — anything that shifts you from the emotional brain to the logical one. What's one you could do today?

S — Sensory Activities

A texture to touch, a taste, a sound, something to look at. What sensory experience could pull your attention into your body right now?

Creating a Life Worth Living

What makes your life worth living?

And what's one way you could do a little more of that this week?

Wrap-Up: Emotion Regulation

← Part 3: Mindfulness Back to Part 1 →

References (APA 7th)

RecTherapyToday. (2018). DBT skills workbook. https://www.rectherapytoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/DBT_workbook.pdf

Linehan, M. M. (2014). DBT skills training manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.

Reformatted by Healing Light SA from the original combined RecTherapyToday PDF into four standalone skill-module worksheets. Free to reproduce for educational/non-commercial use with source credit retained. DBT itself was developed by Marsha M. Linehan, PhD.